How does Netflix Work

Netflix is a streaming service that allows its subscribers to watch movies, series, and several other types of TV shows on their smartphones, TVs, computers, etc. In other words, we can consider it as a replacement for your cable TV subscription given that some of the channels and shows will be exclusive which will not be available on other platforms. Netflix allows unlimited viewing of the content that you love based on the plans you have chosen. In most cases, just spending around $3 per month, you can have enough things to watch on your device using Netflix without paying for your costly cable subscriptions.

Moreover, unlike many of the services, you can watch whatever episodes of your favorite shows using Netflix without having to depend on Live television. If you would like to rewatch your old favorite movies, just open the app and search for it on the list and there you go. You will be served with a high-quality movie to enjoy your time. So, most of the users would find it convenient to re-watching their favorite television movies or series without having to wait for them to come back in the Christmas evenings. That’s where services like Netflix stand out.

How Netflix Work?

So that’s enough explanation about the Netflix service. Now, how does it work? How Netflix different from the normal services that provide similar options to watch live television? Is it better or worse than other services out there? Let’s have a deep look at all of these things in this article. We will be going in-depth to all these factors to let you decide whether to spend money on Netflix or go for other things like purchasing a monthly cable subscription.

Netflix outline

Netflix is basically a storage of millions of hours of video files that include thousands of movies, TV series, documentaries, and many other types of video content. The service provides the users with all these content upon request. There are several Netflix Originals that are exclusive to the platform which you cannot find in any other similar services. As it’s one of the most popular streaming services, you can really find some great exclusive content there. All these served to millions of subscribers all over the globe.

Backend

Like many other services out there, a bunch of features such as recommended videos based on your watch history that is decided by an algorithm running in the backend will be available on the platform as well. The video streaming is incredibly fast with the help of powerful servers backing it up. According to several reports, Netflix is hosted on AWS as one of their topmost prioritized customers to serve content as fast as possible. With the help of this advanced hardware and custom software, Netflix provides its users with an unquestionably fast web content streaming without limits.

Even though thousands of users watching the same movie or TV shows at the same time, Netflix still manages to provide super-fast content to each one of them simultaneously. Utilizing their powerful CDN (Content Delivery Network) known as the Open CDN that downloads and stores content in different CDN servers placed all over the globe, delivering content from the nearest server to the user makes it several times faster. So, basically, even though thousands of requests are being made to the same episode of a series, the content is being delivered from different servers all over the world each one of them powerful enough to handle the traffic.

Whenever a user makes a search for a show and finds their target movie to watch and hits the play button, the request is sent to the nearest CDN server detected by the Netflix algorithm, then the video content starts streaming from the chosen server. So, that’s how they manage to deliver the content so fast, so effortless, and with the highest quality out there. The speed and quality of the streamed content depend on your internet connection speed as well. However, even with the slowest of the connections, the videos will keep on playing with less quality.

There are also reports that they serve their web content such as the Javascript files from the Akamai servers (one of the fastest and most reliable servers out there) making the service lightning-fast and running the year-long without any interruptions. The resources such as the UI elements, graphics, web resources, etc. are fetched and served from these servers to the users.

Subscription

So, they sell monthly subscription-based plans to the customers which also has a 30-day trial if you want to give it a try before spending some actual money on it. They make most of their money with the subscriptions, but some portion of it also comes from the ads they serve. You can cancel the subscription whenever you like. There are 4 subscription options available follows:

Mobile: for mobile users with unlimited movies and shows.

Basic: Watch Netflix on 1 screen at a time.

Standard: Watch Netflix in HD on 2 screens at a time.

Premium: Watch High Definition and the Ultra High Definition Netflix on 4 devices simultaneously.

Devices

As a user, Netflix allows you to watch your favorite videos anywhere at any time and on any device that supports the Netflix app or software or basically can access the internet. Smart TV’s that support the Netflix app (yes, there are TVs that doesn’t), Android or iOS smartphones, iPad, Computers, Streaming media players, Gaming consoles such as the Playstation or Xbox, and almost any device that you own can be used to watch Netflix.

So, that’s how Netflix works. I hope you got what you needed and understood the basic functioning of the service. If you ask me if the service worth it and should you go for it which might be the reason you searched for this article, my answer would be a simple YES. If you are planning to subscribe to something that can provide you with your favorite movies, TV series and other content which allows you to go back to them at any time you feel like, Netflix would be an affordable option for you.